Monthly archives for June, 2014

She arrived a teenager in Hollywood on July 4, 1938, after winning beauty contests in Florida. The move from the East Coast followed what she described as a relatively happy and secure childhood spent in Brooklyn and other locales.

The level-headed Constance Ockleman (changed to Connie Keane when her father died and her mother remarried) stuck around Hollywood for the next 14 years, transforming herself into Veronica Lake (a name thrust upon her, one she never got fully used to), and emerging as “the peek-a-boo” girl — whose hair style captivated film fans and the nation at large in the 1940′s.

Along the way, she proved to be a lonely straight shooter who married badly and acquired odd skills (such as piloting small airplanes). By 1952 at age 30, with her career (28 movies by then) sharply on the downswing, she left Hollywood for good to face of series of personal struggles including alcoholism and domestic and financial woes.

She died four husbands later in Vermont — at age 50 — in 1973 of hepatitus. To fans of director Preston Sturges (Sullivan’s Travels) and of memorable film noirs (The Blue Dahlia, This Gun For Hire), Veronica Lake lives on.

How much do you know about this underrated actress? Please take our Monday Quiz to find out. Our inspiration here is Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake, published two years before her death. (It’s a good read; see if you can locate a copy.) Ok, let’s get going. Answers tomorrow.

1) Question: How did Constance Ockleman become Veronica Lake? Who chose the marquee name and how was it chosen? a) MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, who put names in a hat and pulled out “Veronica Lake”; b) Producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., who cast Lake in the 1941 war drama, I Wanted Wings; c) Agent Henry Willson, who later came up with “Tab Hunter“; or d) Lake herself, who just liked the sound of the name.

2) Question: Who gave Veronica Lake her first kiss? a) William Holden; 2) WilliamBendix; c) Sonny Tufts; or d) Robert Preston.

3) Question: Which one of the following was the first to correctly predict that Lake’s distinctive peek-a-boo hair style would be popular among movie audiences? a) Eddie Cantor; b) Busby Berkeley c) Mervyn Leroy or d) Bob Hope.

4) Question: Lake was much taller than Alan Ladd, her most famous leading man, and was forced to stand in recessed slit ditches in scenes with him in order to hide the discrepancy. a) True; or b) False.

5) Question: Lake occasionally got physical on the sets of her early movies, and manhandled one actor whom she particularly disliked. Can you name him? a) Brian Donlevy; b) FredricMarch; c) Ray Milland; or d) George Reeves.

6) Question: Lake began a longstanding love affair with costar Alan Ladd when the two toplined in 1942′s This Gun For Hire. a) True; or b) False.

7) Question: Lake cites one movie in particular was her worst, and proved to be “the beginning of a great (career) slide down.” Which one of the following was she referring to? a) I Married A Witch; b) So Proudly We Hail; c) Forty Little Mothers; or d) The Hour Before Dawn.

8) Question: Lake so alienated Preston Sturges — the most famous director she ever worked with, who cast her opposite Joel McCrea in the 1941 comedy Sullivan’s Travels — that he never worked with her again. a) True; or b) False.

9) Question: Which of Lake’s four husbands was her most disappointing lover? a) Andre de Toth; b) Robert Carleton-Munro; c) Joseph McCarthy or d) John Detlie.

10) Question: Which one of the following titles was Lake’s first movie in color? a) Bring on the Girls; b) Slattery’s Hurricane; c) Stronghold; or d) Footsteps in the Snow.

One fascinating thing about the internet is that once something is posted it’s OUT THERE.

One of our German readers, heinke, just caught up with our Dec. 20, 2012 post about Raymond Burr, and wrote us this:

I am glad to see an old “whats my line”- film with Raymond Burr in it. There he was such a funny and charming private person. Very different to the Perry Mason role he was to be seen over here in Germany in the 1960s. Sorry he´s gone that early , in 1993.

Our post was entitled One Mean Dude — RAYMOND BURR Before ‘Perry Mason,’ and here’s a bit of what we’d said:

There’s no question that Raymond Burr is most remembered today as the star of two tube series that riveted television viewers worldwide from 1957 through 1975.

But classic movie lovers are likely to prefer the Raymond Burr that turns up in the some 10 film noir titles of the Forties and Fifties, showcasing the hulking (nearly 6-feet-2) actor and his commanding voice in roles ranging from creepy villains to psychotic killers.

Today we’ll focus on Burr’s early screen career before Perry Mason and Ironside monopolized his principal professional identity.

Burr played pretty good guys in both TV series. But, happily, this is definitely not the case in the noir drama and policiers he made earlier in his movie career.

It was revealed after he died at age 76 in 1993 that he was gay, but that was never an issue in his career. The studios just didn’t see him as a leading man type. Burr often projected onscreen an air of self-satisfied evil that drew noir directors in need of a sleazebag.

Burr worked with some of the best movie directors: Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Joseph Losey and Douglas Sirk, among others. And, we shouldn’t forget his turn in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller, Rear Window, portraying an apartment-dwelling husband who murders his wife, methodically disposes of her body and then menaces a wheelchair bound James Stewart.

In 1953′s The Blue Gardenia, Burr turns up as one “Harry Prebble,” a sleazy playboy whose impregnated girlfriend dispatches him with a fire poker. In 1947′s Desperate, he is the head of a gang of warehouse thieves who set up unsuspecting Steve Brodie in a botched heist.

1949′s Abandoned has Burr as a mobster involved in a Los Angeles baby-stealing ring. In 1948′s Pitfall, the actor pays an unstable private investigator who becomes obsessed with the woman he is tracking, portrayed by our noir favorite Lizabeth Scott. Burr gets beaten up before Scott ends a complicated plot about adultery with two slugs in his gut.

One of Burr’s more enjoyable turns as a sadistic villain arrives in 1950′s Red Light, a strange little picture which features George Raft, of all people, on the road to devout Catholicism. Raft is out to avenge the murder of his military chaplain brother but pulls back at the moment of truth to allow the Lord to do the work.

The Lord accommodates. Burr’s character, a vengeful ex-con, is electrocuted in the rain while clambering above a lighting fixture (spelling out “24 Hour Service”) above an apartment building. The ending is a combination of Journey Into Fear and White Heat. Great fun.

The scene that sticks, though, is Gene Lockhart’s grisly demise at the hands (and feet) of Burr’s ex-con, who kicks out the props holding up a tractor trailer bed under which Lockhart’s character is hidden.

As we hear the screams of the victim, the camera pans up to a shot of the sinister Raymond Burr as Cherney, smoking and smiling, notes Alain Silver and ElizabethWard’s in the third edition of Film Noir.

Well if you’re German, or familiar with German cinema, you know he was one of the biggest film stars and recording stars in Germany of the 20th Century.

American film buffs know him as Mazeppa, the strong man in The Blue Angel, which starred Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings. Unlike Jannings, who’d been in Hollywood and became an international star, Albers’ entire career was in Germany. One of his famous roles in the 30s was that of Sherlock Holmes.

Like Jannings, Albers started in silents. He made an easy transition to sound and was the star of the first all-talking German picture from the famous UFA studio.

Like Jannings he made films all through the Nazi regime, but unlike Jannings he was NOT tainted (he made no propaganda films), and did not have to go through denazification at war’s end.

The power of his stardom allowed him and his half Jewish lover, Hansi Burg, to remain free of any political inference in Nazi-ruled Germany. He was a member of the party and that was all that was asked of him.

But eventually his relationship with Burg was considered too embarrassing, and she was allowed to move to Switzerland. She then emigrated to England. But he was allowed to financially support her.

When the war ended Burg returned to Germany in a British Army uniform, and helped Albers in his escape of any serious repercussions. He had money (he had been well paid during the war years), and he wasn’t banned from working as others who’d made films for the Nazis were.

Still his film career stalled.

However, he continued his record career and did return to films as a character actor.

He is thought of as a staple of German cinema of the 20th century, and his popularity there is often compared to that of John Wayne’s in the US. Although they never wed he and Hansi Burg were together until he died in 1960.

Paulette Goddard was one of the top stars of the 1940s. AND she managed to marry very interesting men. But how much do you really know about her life and career?

To find out, we hope you took our Monday Quiz yesterday (to refresh, check out the questions in one blog below). Ok, here we go with the answers:

1) Answer: c) Goddard, then a teenaged chorus girl, was perched onstage on a cutout of the moon being serenaded by the baritone leading man of the 1927 musical Rio Rita, a FloZiegfeld production. The odd setting and Goddard’s physical attributes caught attention of audiences, and Paulette was soon cast in four short Ziegfeld films. It was the beginning.

2) Answer: c) Paulette emerged from her first marriage, to socialite Edgar James, with a cool $100,000. In today’s dollars the take would be worth about $1.3 million. Not a bad haul for a woman not yet 22.

3) Answer: d) Charlie Chaplin certainly enjoyed Goddard’s physical attributes, but he was deeply impressed by her cool business sense, an attribute not usually found in young starlets.

4) Answer: Goddard did NOT appear with Chaplin in a) Monsieur Verdoux and in c) Limelight. Her services could have been nicely used, especially in the latter.

5) Answer: We don’t believe this question has been definitively settled but the best guess is that Chaplin and Goddard were married on a whirlwind world tour in (b) 1936 in China. He was husband No. 2.

6) Answer: b) George Gershwin. He met Goddard at a late Thirties dinner party, and fell hard. Said Gershwin’s pal, Oscar Levant: the composer fell madly in love with Paulette.He was more in love than I’d ever seen him. The romance eventually fizzled, and Gershwin never made it to the ranks of Paulette’s husbands — in order, 1) James; 2) Chaplin; 3) Burgess Meredith and see below for the identity of No. 4.

7) Answer: c) Clark Gable. He and Goddard had an affair in the late Forties when her career was ebbing as was her marriage to actor Meredith. But Gable, known for being notoriously cheap, would not commit. He insisted that he and Paulette were merely good friends. That they remained.

8) Answer: b) German novelist Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the WesternFront) married Paulette in 1958, husband No. 4. He was a wealthy sophisticate, had been around the block several times (featuring romances with Greta Garbo and MarleneDietrich) and wanted to settle down. By all accounts, it was a contented union which lasted until his death in 1970.

9) Answer: c) Paulette had a slightly receding hairline hidden by coiffures that largely covered the top of her broad forehead.

10) Answer: a) True. That indiscreet cinematographer was referring to Cecil B. DeMille’s historical adventure Unconquered, a big hit of the 1947 season. The “young” leads were Goddard (then in her mid Thirties) and Gary Cooper (then 46). The cinematographer had a point.

She was as brainy as she was beautiful. She was, at least for a time, the apple of CharlieChaplin’s eye. She always displayed a yen for luxury, and let no festive occasion pass without generous helpings of champagne and caviar.

Not bad for Pauline Marion Levy, a Long Island girl born to an impoverished family in 1905, 1910, 1911 or 1915 (take your pick; no one is really sure). As Paulette Goddard, she lit up the screen for more than four decades covering some 63 movie and tv credits, and then departed Hollywood without a backward glance, embarking on a marriage to European sophisticate who had romanced Garbo and Dietrich.

Goddard is not the best known actress from Hollywood’s classic period of the Forties, but she had (and has) her loyal fans. She was from the beginning a smart, fun-loving, independent woman and spent the lavish sums she made with style and purpose. How much do you know about her?

Happy to say that our inspiration here is the 1985 biography Paulette: The Adventurous Life of Paulette Goddard, co-authored by Edward Z. Epstein and Classic Movie Chat’s own Joe Morella. If I may say so (Frank speaking) the book is a wonderful read, and an essential reference on Goddards’s adventurous life. Ok, here we go:

1) Question: When Goddard was a very young girl, she caught the attention of Broadway audiences by being serenaded by her leading man in a musical that required her to pose in an unusual setting. What was the setting? a) She was spread-eagled on a platform five feet above the stage; b) She was seated on the lap of her leading man; c) She was perched on a cutout of the moon; or d) She hung precariously from a ceiling wire.

2) Question: When she was still a teenager, Goddard was married for a short time to a Palm Beach socialite. She won a generous divorce settlement in 1929. How much did Paulette walk away with? a) $50,000; b) $4,000; c) $100,000; or d) $20,000.

3) Question: When they first met in the early Thirties, Charlie Chaplin was especially impressed with which one of Goddard’s qualities? a) Paulette’s shapely legs; b) Her girlish sense of humor; c) Her creativity; or d) Her keen business sense.

4) Question: Which of these Chaplin classics did Goddard NOT appear in? a) MonsieurVerdoux, b) The Great Dictator; c) Limelight or d) Modern Times.

5) Question: Exactly when and where did Goddard and Chaplin officially tie the knot? a) 1933 in Yuma, Arizona; b) 1936 in China; 1934 in Hoboken, New Jersey; or 1936 in Santa Monica, Calif.

6) Question: Goddard had a celebrated affair with a famous American composer. Can you identify him? a) Aaron Copeland; b) George Gershwin; c) Cole Porter; or d) Harold Arlen.

7) Question: Goddard also had an affair with which one of the following stars but was turned off by his thriftiness (he was cheap)? a) Ray Milland; b) Gary Cooper; c) ClarkGable; or d) Bob Hope.

8) Question: Which one of the following was Paulette’s last husband, a famous European novelist who preferred her for her brains than for her good looks and social amiability? a) Thomas Mann; b) Erich Maria Remarque; c) Franz Kafka; or d) Umberto Echo.

9) Question: Goddard throughout her career had a physical shortcoming that she took pains to conceal. Was it a) Being slightly cross-eyed; b) A hook nose; c) A slightly receding hairline; or d) A persistent case of acne.

10) Question: The cinematographer of a movie teaming Goddard with Gary Cooper claimed that both stars had been difficult to photograph as the “young” leads demanded by the script. a) True; or b) False.

A few weeks ago we ran a picture of four top celebrities of the 1940′s, Bob Hope, FrankSinatra, Bette Davis and Jimmy Durante, and mentioned that it was rare to find top stars photographed together (outside of publicity stills for movies).

Today we present another photo of 40s stars, all beauties, all major players of their day and ask you to identify them.

Today’s groups are all movie stars. But in future weeks we’ll provide pictures of people from different arenas of fame who once met and were photographed together. It’s such fun to remember.

Below are some more recent film stars who (as the cliche goes) need no introduction.

She was a woman way ahead of her time. Born into the wealthy and socially prominent New York family, Mary Donohue scorned many offers of marriage until the right man came along. The right man was Cuban born Dr. Jose Maria Ferrer, chief of staff at New York’s St. Vincent Hospital.

Mary had four children, and although she was widowed at an early age (when all the children were under 10) she made sure the Ferrer children were educated and prepared to contribute to society. Her youngest son, Mel, however, was a rebel.

Mary’s older son, Jose Maria Ferrer Jr. became a surgeon and his fame exceeded that of his famous father’s. Her older daughter also became a doctor and was instrumental in developing the electrocardiogram. Irene Ferrer won a Nobel Prize in Medicine. Mary’s youngest child, Theresa Ferrer, was the religion editor of The New York Herald Tribune and later the education editor at Newsweek.

The rebellious Mel, however, went off to do summer stock when he was 20, dropped out of Princeton, and eloped.

Mel’s relationship with his mother was strained for years. She might have been upset by the fact he’d divorced his first wife, Frances Pritchard, married his second wife, BarbaraTripp, had two children with her while simultaneously having two more children with Pritchard. Then he divorced Tripp and married Pritchard again.

Supposedly Mel and Mama didn’t speak for years.

Mel Ferrer was married five times in all but his most famous marriage, of course, was to Audrey Hepburn (pictured with him above). During that marriage — her first of two, which lasted 14 years until 1968 — Audrey was able to forge a reconciliation between Mel and his mother.

Ferrer was never a major Hollywood star but he is in several notable films: 1953′s Lili opposite Leslie Caron, 1952′s RanchoNotorious costarring Marlene Dietrich, and 1956′s The Sun Also Rises. He also starred opposite then wife Hepburn in 1956′s War and Peace and directed her in 1959′s Green Mansions.

He was a theater director as well, having scored on Broadway in 1946 with Cyrano de Bergerac starring Jose Ferrer (no relation.)

Though they were cordial to each other during Mel’s marriage to Hepburn the relation- ship between Mary Donohue Ferrer and her son Mel was never close or warm. She considered she had failed in his upbringing. But at least her other three children were great successes. She had every right to be proud of the job she’d done raising them.

Since there is nothing in our rule book precluding the honoring of three stars at the same time in one blog, we decided to plunge ahead. Thus our “Stars” of the Week, dedicated to the memories of Mona Freeman, Martha Hyer and Ruby Dee.

While the latter had the best acting resume, Freeman and Hyer were hardly slouches. All three enjoyed solid careers in different respects although only Hyer (pictured above) could at least tentatively claim status as a leading woman.

– Mona Elizabeth Freeman, who died on May 23 at age 87, was the essential Fifties Hollywood ingenue: sweet, virtuous with a suggestion of sex buried within that wholesome package that drove her teenage fans (including Frank back then) wild. She started out as a John Robert Powers model in New York City. At age 14 was named the first “Miss Subways,” which made her face familiar to millions of New York subway riders in the mid-Forties. Howard Hughes probably never rode a subway, but he did take notice of Freeman and signed her to a contract.

Among her first assignments was a tiny part in the 1952 film noir, Angel Face, preceded by a one-line turn as Edward G. Robinson’s secretary in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Freeman later went to Paramount and branched out to other studios. She portrayed Tab Hunter’s teenage sweetheart in 1955′s Battle Cry. By 1960, her career had shifted almost exclusively to television. I’m not the type, she said, to play roles which won Academy Awards.

– Martha Hyer , who died May 31 at age 89, never won an Oscar but she was nominated for her role as a reserved schoolteacher in 1958′s Some Came Running (she lost out that year in the supporting actress category to Wendy Hiller, who won for Separate Tables). A Texas-born beauty Hyer portrayed William Holden’s fiancee in 1954′s Sabrina costarring Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn. Hyer was a stunner, sometimes compared to Grace Kelly, and enjoyed the good life. She was married twice, the second time to Casablanca producer Hal Wallis (it lasted two decades until his death). Her career went well into the Sixties with roles in The Carpetbaggers and 1965′s The Sons of Katie Elder with John Wayne and Dean Martin.

– Ruby Dee (nee Ruby Ann Wallace), who died June 11 at age 91,wasknown equally well for her stage work as for her movies. I didn’t have the kind of talent or personality that kept me dreaming about Hollywood, she once said. They don’t hire little colored girls to do this or that. Nonetheless Hollywood made good use of her talents in supporting roles usually as the sensible wife or girl friend as in The Jackie Robinson Story (opposite the baseball master himself)and inthe same year’s No Way Out.

She could also play less noble roles; her part in Jules Dassin’s 1968 outing, Up Tight!, was that of a prostitute on welfare. Dee’s career was a long one, lasting 36 years covering nearly 115 titles, as was her second marriage to the late actor Ossie Davis (it lasted 57 years). Unlike many actresses, she seemed to get better as she aged. Frank remembers a New York interview he nervously conducted with Dee as a green reporter for Variety back in the early 70′s. To his enormous relief she proved both patient and unfailingly gracious.

Again we ask the question: has any classic movie actress so indelibly dominated movies, recordings, live performance and Las Vegas so effectively and so glamorously over decades than the subject of yesterday’s Monday Quiz – Marlene Dietrich?

Her unforgettable vocalizing of the most effective anti-war hymn of all time – it was also her nickname, “Lili Marlene” — as well as her bravery as a German-born entertainer openly and frequently serenading American troops during World War II assures her a substantial niche in history. As do her more than 50 movies – 33 Hollywood titles — spanning 55 years.

How much do you really know about this classic international star? To find out, please scan these answers to yesterday’s quiz. (To refresh yourselves about the questions, just scroll down to our Monday blog.) We have been inspired here by author Charlotte Chandler’s 2001 tome, Marlene: A Personal Biography.

1) Answer: a) True. The German producer of The Blue Angel told the movie’s director, Josef von Sternberg, that while Dietrich showed promise as an actress, she was too chubby to play the movie’s key role of the slutty seductress, “Lola Lola.” Sternberg insisted in hiring Marlene but immediately put her on a rigorous diet. And the rest is…..

2) Answer: a) and b). A rival producer tried unsuccessfully to get the rights to The BlueAngel as a vehicle for Louise Brooks. ”It would have changed my life,” the American actress said later. Dietrich’s costar, Emil Jannings, preferred German actress Lucie Mannheim, best known for her later role in Alfred Hitchcock’s original 1935 version of The 39 Steps.

3) Answer: b) False.While The Blue Angel was a big hit in Europe in German, it’s U.S. playoff in English was a flop. It wasn’t until Dietrich’s first Hollywood film, 1930′s Morocco, became a box 0ffice hit (making her a big star) that the original German-language Angel successfully released in America.

4) Answer: a) 1930′s Morocco.

5) Answer: c). Dietrich was called “Paul” because, her mother said, it was the name your father chose for you…we were expecting a boy.

6) Answer: Ok, this was a bit of a trick question. The answer is all options. Marlene loved to design hats, cook, fancied helping people in distress and studied the violin as a young girl. Fortunately, she chose acting.

7) Answer: Another trick question. Dietrich had affairs of varying duration with all choices: James Stewart, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Wayne. All the while she maintained a marriage with her one and only husband, Rudi Sieber.

8) Answer: a) True. Dietrich told Fairbanks that she was von Sternberg’s “creation.” Author Chandler reports that under his skillful tutelage in lighting, cinematography, makeup (not to mention that diet and exercise regimen), Dietrich blossomed into an “insoucant blond goddess.” The director and Marlene made six films together, cementing her stardom.

9)Answer: d) Jean Gabin, the one lover that got away.

10) Answer: b) False. But Edith Piaf and Dietrich did promenade down Paris’ Faubourg Saint-Honore with their arms linked. They were stared at.